Medications or vitamins in pill, tablet, or capsule form are often packaged, stored, and distributed to consumers in plastic sheets generally called blister packages. These blister packages often have each dose of the product sealed within a separate pocket or blister, thereby isolating the individual doses from each other and from environmental contaminants. Many designs for blister packages currently in use involve a push-through opening mechanism. In these designs, a thin layer of plastic, foil, or other rupturable material is secured to the package over the individual blisters to secure the doses within the package until they are extracted by the consumer. Extraction of the product sealed within the blister package often involves pushing against the backside of the blister to force the product against the rupturable layer. If this force is sufficient to break the rupturable layer, the dose is ejected through the layer and is thus made available to the consumer. The ability to dispense individual doses of the product while keeping the remaining doses securely stored has made the use of these blister packages increasingly popular.
Of course, not all kinds of medications and vitamins can be distributed using this kind of push-through packaging design. In particular, some kinds of medications and vitamins are soft, breakable, or otherwise ill-suited for an extraction process in which a substantial force is applied to the medication or vitamin itself. Unfortunately, the use of the push-through kind of blister packages has become so widespread that consumers tend to assume that blister packs are meant to be opened by applying pressure against the blister pocket associated with a dose of the product. Applying such pressure to a package containing a soft or breakable product, however, can result in the product being crushed, broken, or otherwise damaged while the consumer tries to retrieve it from the package. As a result, special care must be taken when designing a blister package for distributing soft or breakable medications and vitamins to prevent consumers from inadvertently destroying the product contained in the package.